According to OzModChips. com, an Australian seller of videogame modchips, a last-week hack has `jailbroken' the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console; thereby allowing users to run backup and home-developed copies of games, along with accessing countless pirated titles.

Going by the three videos posted by OzModChips. com YouTube, a fully recent version of the PS3 console can be jailbroken with the help of a simple USB dongle which, when inserted into a USB port of the console and booted, allows the console to run the software on the stick.

Interestingly, while the software installs the jailbreak that circumvents most of the security measures put in place by Sony, it also keeps the valid warranty seal of the console intact.

As per Ars Technica, the USB dongle that facilitates the PS3 jailbreak is already available for preorder for $150; and will likely be shipped around August 27.

With the jailbreaking of the PS3 - an incident that users were waiting for and Sony was trying to avert -, the owners of the console can dump borrowed games onto the console's hard drive - or even an external drive - and play them, sans any optical discs.

Additional good news for the jailbreakers is that the software running the jailbreak also stops Sony from pushing a system update; thereby implying that unless the users upgrade their console's OS manually, the jailbreak will continue to work!